Seven killed in Kenyan cleric protest

At least seven people were killed when police fired on about 100 Muslim youth in the Kenyan capital who on Friday protested the arrest of a radical Jamaican-born Muslim cleric whose teachings influenced one of the 2005 London transport system bombers.

Farouk Machanje of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, which organised the protest in Nairobi, said five people have been killed.

An official with an ambulance service said a young man, who had been shot in the head, died as they took him to the main government hospital.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. He said they took 10 other people with bullet wounds to the hospital.

An Associated Press reporter saw the body of another young man who relatives said was 25 years old. The reporter also saw three other young men wounded in the protest being treated at a clinic near the downtown Nairobi mosque where it began after Friday prayers.

Police restricted the protesters' movements by standing at roads leading away from the mosque. Soon after the protesters emerged from the mosque, police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse them.